Joint Proposals

Joint proposals are single proposals submitted to multiple National Time
Allocation Committees (NTACs). During the International TAC process, the
separate components that have been individually technically and scientifically
assessed by NTACs are merged to form a single proposal. The merged proposal is
placed in the queue at an initial position corresponding to the time-weighted
mean ranking of the individual national assessments. All joint proposals are
discussed by the ITAC. Following execution, time is charged to the partner
countries in proportion to their contributions to the merged program.

All joint proposals must be submitted using the Gemini
Phase I Tool (PIT) even if the proposal involves partners that offer other
submission mechanisms for non-joint proposals. No other proposal form or process
can be used for joint proposals.
Joint proposals should be submitted by the deadline of the partner country to which the Principal Investigator is affiliated.

The PIT submits to all of the partners automatically. All of the National Gemini Offices have established servers
to receive and process your application directly from the PIT. In the PIT
"submit" tab the intended partners are selected by double clicking on the
relevant boxes, and you must specify the time and the minimum time,
requested from each partner. The total minimum time (sum of the minimum time per partner)
must be equal to the minimum
acceptable time allocation. This number is used by the ITAC to determine if it is useful
to schedule a joint program which is not supported by all of the partners.

As with non-joint proposals, each proposal must have a Principal
Investigator who is used as the primary contact by Gemini staff. The
PI will receive Phase II instructions from Gemini, automatic notifications from the
Observing Database etc. The PIT "submit" page
allows others from the list of PI and co-Is to be identified as the National
Lead Scientist; each partner may have a different national lead if desired.
The national lead scientist is used as the point of contact by National Gemini
Office and National TAC support staff during Phase I only. It is important that the
roles and contributions of each Partner Lead Scientist are clearly explained in
the proposal, as the National TACs of the co-Is will take this into consideration when allocating time.

When the proposal is submitted it is sent to all of the specified partners.
The submit tab will report the status of each component.
If one or more of the components fail to be submitted,
for example due to unavailability of the network or backend server at the
national office, they can be re-sent by the applicants at a later time. (The
successfully-submitted components are not re-sent). If you experience a problem with submission,
please contact your National Gemini Office support staff in the first instance.